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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22640008">the space between</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_Sabre/pseuds/Jade_Sabre'>Jade_Sabre</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Mass Effect Holiday Cheer, Post-Mass Effect 3, travel fic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 01:15:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,361</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22640008</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_Sabre/pseuds/Jade_Sabre</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The <i>Normandy</i> makes her way back to Earth.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>65</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the space between</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigeon_theoneandonly/gifts">Pigeon_theoneandonly</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello!  This year's Mass Effect Holiday Cheer fic is for <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigeon_theoneandonly/works">pigeontheoneandonly</a> over on Tumblr.  They said they liked character relationships, spaceflight, angst, and Kaidan, and I have striven to provide all of the above in varying degrees.  I had to do a little bit of canon tweaking, but who doesn't?  Anyway, I hope you enjoy!  Happy Holiday Cheer!</p><p>As always but especially I owe a debt to Quark, who recently killed Kaidan for the umpteenth time on Virmire but it's okay, I won't hold it against her.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the end, they ran out of time.<br/><br/>From the beginning they’d always joked about <em>shore leave</em> and <em>down time</em>, like they’d thought they’d have a chance to get to know each other when things settled, like they’d thought things <em>would</em> settle.  But in the end they first made love aboard the ship in the space between mutiny and destruction, and neither life nor death made any attempt to give them better opportunities for it.<br/><br/>So they stole them, a weekend here, a few minutes there, glances and smiles and holding hands when no one was looking.  And later—<em>after</em>—in messages full of longing and promise, until finally they were together again, even if the galaxy was trying to tear itself apart.  There was no time but they carved it out anyway, paid for it in the blood.  They’d find reasons to head to the Citadel, to breathe for five or six or maybe a whole twenty-four hours before jetting back into the black.  And the apartment there really started to feel like—well, not <em>home</em>, exactly, because they were two old soldiers and soldiers didn’t know how to settle, but familiar, at least.  Comforting.  Reliable, maybe.  Somewhere they could just <em>be</em>, once they had a little more time.<br/><br/>Then the battle for Earth blew everything to hell.<br/><br/>He watched it blow from the observation deck, a pulse and a shockwave and thousands of shards glittering like so many new stars and all he could hear in his ears was the silence of space, though logically he knew alarms were blaring and Vega was cursing and EDI was calmly counting down to their impending doom.  But in that moment his mind was like a broken mirror, stray thoughts reflecting light into the vast impenetrable blackness of a grief he’d sworn he’d never know again—<br/><br/>a quick kiss, casual and free, the smirking curve of her lip belying the utter joy in her eyes that he’s there to kiss at all<br/><br/>walking into a dark classroom and suddenly finding himself lifted to the ceiling and trapped there by too many biotic forces to name, the lights coming up and his students laughing at him from the corner<br/><br/>waking up to the sound of James downstairs going “one-hundred seventy-<em>nine</em>, one-hundred <em>eighty</em>,” pulling a pillow over his head, wishing Shepard had been a little more discerning when handing out the apartment keycode<br/><br/>in the orchard with his mother, sunshine on his face and the wind in the leaves, using biotics to shake the apples from the trees<br/><br/>his father, teaching him to fry bacon, “because one day you might want to impress someone, son, and another day, if that someone leaves you,” and the familiar scent of his father’s favorite beer as he took a long swig, “well, you’ll always have bacon.”<br/><br/>—and then the splintered light coalesced into the brilliant blue of the relay’s burst, and they were gone.<br/><br/>The <em>Normandy</em> hadn’t had any bacon on it when she blew through the relay before it exploded, just some sad plant protein substitute and what Garrus told him was a pretty decent take on the dextro version.  Which had been good, in a way, in that it had given him an attainable goal to strive for, something to focus on when his thoughts took to wandering and wondering and worrying—<em>bacon</em>, he was going to have bacon again, and everything else would—be okay.  It had to be okay.<br/><br/>Either way, there’d be bacon.<br/><br/>(She was okay.  She had to be okay, if only because her being okay was probably impossible and coming back from the dead had <em>definitely</em> been impossible and she’d managed that, so she was certainly okay now.)<br/><br/>They crash-landed in the jungles of Benning, which had no bacon but plenty of tech for scrounging and more vegetables than anyone considered strictly necessary for their diets as well as pockets of tired, desperate, ragtag survivors who were more than grateful to hear news of the Reapers’ defeat.  Or presumed defeat.  They were less excited about the prospect of rebuilding Arcturus Station, let alone the mass relays, given that they had mostly been farmers before the invasion; but some of them came aboard the <em>Normandy</em> to help her limp back to Earth.<br/><br/>The physical repairs didn’t take long—they had plenty of hands and not much else to be working on—but it took Tali three months to bring EDI back online in a state mostly resembling how she’d been before.  Mostly, minus her memory of the past three years and a couple of bits of code that Tali said the Reapers had perfected but she’d merely cobbled together.<br/><br/>“But they’re probably not <em>that</em> important,” Tali explained as they crowded around EDI’s blinking bot body.  “And anyway, she’s smart enough to figure out how to improve them herself.”<br/><br/>“Sure,” said Joker, the sarcastic laughter in his voice deep and biting and still not enough to disguise his fear.  “But what if she decides to improve things the way the Reapers did?”<br/><br/>“She <em>probably </em>won’t,” Tali began, “and anyway—”<br/><br/>“What are the Reapers?” EDI asked, which left everyone present standing perfectly still, staring at her.<br/><br/>But he realized, as she blinked at them with detached curiosity, that it was—a good question, a question that generations of children would ask, that from now on there would be people who grew up without a whisper of the shadow of the low-and-high-level dread that had filled his waking moments and his dreams for the past four years.  And that was a <em>good thing</em>, and they’d done it—<br/><br/>“Dead,” Joker said, “they’re real dead, and you’re not,” and he sounded like Kaidan felt whenever he thought <em>okay</em> and he couldn’t blame the pilot for grabbing EDI’s arm and dragging the confused AI’s bot-body to the lounge to begin her reeducation in being—herself.<br/><br/>(She had to be okay.  For any definition of “okay,” really, from “not a scratch on her” to the bare-bones meaning of “alive,” not even “conscious,” and a very small part of him hoped that maybe she wasn’t because if she was then she was alive and conscious and he wasn’t there to take care of her and she had to be—it had to have been—she must be—<em>okay</em>.)<br/><br/>Once EDI was online—once the engines were repaired—once they were ready, as ready as they could be, they started back to Earth.  Kaidan stood in the cockpit with Cortez, watching as the stars around them shifted into red pinpricks as Joker engaged the FTL drive, the familiar blue flashes filling the viewport.  “EDI?” Joker asked.<br/><br/>“All systems appear to be maintaining,” she replied from the seat beside him.  “I am not detecting any fatal errors at this time.”<br/><br/>“Is fatal the only option?” Joker asked.<br/><br/>“I’m going to go check on Engineering,” Kaidan said, trying to identify the sudden unease in his stomach.  He was as glad as any of them to be going home—<em>home</em>—and feeling nervous was only natural, but he realized they’d never discussed how <em>long</em>—<br/><br/>“I’ll come with you,” Cortez said, and so together they made their way through the CIC and down the elevator to Engineering, where they found Garrus and the engineers standing against the railing, looking up at the reconstructed drive core.<br/><br/>“It’s not pretty,” Adams said.  “It’ll work, but it’s not pretty.”<br/><br/>“How bad is it?” Garrus asked, crossing his arms.<br/><br/>“Well,” Adams said, and then he stopped and looked at his subordinates.<br/><br/>“We’re severely underpowered, is the thing,” Daniels said.  “And you have to balance—”<br/><br/>“Fuel reserves and efficiency,” Donnelly continued.  “We can push her as fast as she’ll go, but there comes a point where we can get farther faster, but we’ll just be stuck in the end.  Without knowing what—”<br/><br/>“—resupply will look like, we don’t want to push too hard,” Daniels said.  “And honestly it wasn’t like we were ever going to get back to full speed, anyway.  Benning just didn’t have the resources necessary to repair a Tantalus drive core.  And some of these parts are a little old—”<br/><br/>“Ancient, you mean,” said Donnelly.<br/><br/>“—so you don’t want to overpower them, either,” she concluded, which Kaidan was grateful for, because looking between them made him feel like he was watching a ping-pong match and his neck was twinging.<br/><br/>“But she’ll fly,” Cortez said.<br/><br/>“She’ll fly,” Tali said.  “And we’ve got enough spare parts in reserve to patch her together should anything fail.”<br/><br/>“And a quarian to do the patching,” Adams said, and Tali inclined her helmet to him.<br/><br/>Everything sounded reasonable, but he hadn’t missed the glaring gap in their report.  “What’s our maximum speed?” he asked finally.  “What are we looking at?”<br/><br/>The engineers all exchanged a look, and all but Adams went back to their consoles.  “Strictly speaking,” he said, “hard to say.  But if I had to hazard a guess—half a light year a day?”<br/><br/>“That’s generous,” Donnelly muttered, and Adams winced.<br/><br/>Kaidan stared at him.  “But that’s,” Garrus said.<br/><br/>“That’s what we were flying when we first got out there,” Cortez whispered.  “Surely—”<br/><br/>“That’s not even one percent,” Garrus said, while Kaidan went on staring, feeling as though his guts had been punched out and left him with nothing but air in their place.<br/><br/>Adams shrugged.  “I told you it wasn’t pretty,” he said.<br/><br/>“But—” Kaidan said, and then he didn’t know how to finish it.  <em>But we have places to be.  But Earth needs us.  But she told me to show up</em>.  <em>But I told her I’d be there.</em><br/><br/>They were all looking at him, Donnelly and Daniels with nervous glances over their shoulders, Adams standing nervously at ease in front of him, Cortez with his arms crossed and a frown on his face; Garrus and Tali looked from a strange sort of distance, supportive yet removed, and he realized with a sinking feeling that he outranked every other human aboard.  That they were on active duty again, and they had nowhere higher to look on the chain of command.<br/><br/>So he took a breath and squared his shoulders and said, “Thank you, Adams.  I know you’re all doing your best.”  He looked back at them, and started rehearsing the refrain he’d have to perform for the rest of the crew.  “We’ll get there eventually.”<br/><br/>It took a year.<br/><br/>It took a year, and he spent a lot of it in a sleep pod because sleep pods wouldn’t let him have nightmares, and being awake was—rough.  He was, after all, the ranking officer aboard, and as such the crew looked to him to make the calls.  He almost never made them on his own, forming an unofficial council with Garrus and Liara and Tali and hashing through questions of salvage and refueling and which of the distress calls Samantha sifted through they could actually afford to respond to, but at the end of the day he was the one who had to issue the orders and he was the one who collapsed into the commander’s bed and stared at her fish tanks and idly thanked Ashley’s God that said commander had spent the credits on the damn VI that kept the damn fish alive even when he forgot to feed them.  He wished there was a VI for the rest of the galaxy’s problems.  He wished he wasn’t the one making the calls.  He wished he had bacon.<br/><br/>(For crying out loud, the <em>hamster</em> had survived.  No way the galaxy’s most adorable space rodent had made it and she wasn’t okay.  She was okay.  She had to be.)<br/><br/>A few months in, they limped past the wreckage of the Arcturus relay and then Arcturus Station itself.  The commander had mentioned that they’d scanned the remains, but he hadn’t been aboard at the time and hadn’t realized—or maybe he’d suppressed—the enormity of the loss.  He stood before the starboard observation viewport, the glittering metal fragments filling the vista before him as an endless drifting wasteland, and his knees began to tremble.  But half the crew was with him, paying their respects, so he couldn’t sit down hard on the couch or lean his head against the transparisteel as he’d done so many months before, contemplating the void and his father’s disappearance all at once.  Space didn’t seem so empty, not with the rubble of so many lives slowly spinning past him, but even with so many of his crew members surrounding him he was still <em>alone</em>, more than he’d been then.  <br/><br/>He held attention for as long as he could, falling back on sheer muscle memory and determination, until the acting ship’s chaplain broke the silence with a short memorial, quoting a poem he thought he recognized, though he couldn’t place it.  As the crew dispersed he made his shaky way to the port observation deck, where the other half of the crew had been keeping their own vigil, though everyone seemed too lost in thought to offer him a salute, for which he was grateful. When he finally stepped inside and looked out the viewport and saw the same sight, each glint of light the wandering tombstone of an unknown soldier or statesman or civilian, his knees did give out; and he staggered to the mercifully empty bar, landing heavily on one of the stools and resting his head on the cool metal counter.<br/><br/>When he closed his eyes, he didn’t see Arcturus Station.  He saw the Citadel, blown to bits, so many glittering tombstones when there’d only been one living person aboard—<br/><br/>A drink—some asari liquor they’d gotten by accident months ago, if he was remembering right—appeared in his hand and he moved to down it by rote, but as the glass touched his lips a little voice in his head said <em>wait</em>, and he remembered how he’d tried to drown the grief last time and it hadn’t worked, nothing had worked except <em>working</em> and trying to forget.  Not that he’d been particularly successful at that.  He set the glass down, its contents untouched, and rubbed his face.<br/><br/>“Major,” said a voice, and he turned his head and saw Traynor standing behind him.  “I have another—oh, shit,” she said, apparently in response to the expression on his face, and next thing he knew she was collapsing on the stool next to him, landing her elbows on the bar and rubbing her face too.  “That was awful.”<br/><br/>He blinked at her, then took a moment to look around the rest of the deck: a few crew members gathering by the poker table, Vega at their head, but no one standing by the viewport and no one close enough to hear a quiet conversation.  “Yeah,” he said.<br/><br/>“Last time we were here—I never leave the CIC when we’re on mission, you know, and I always told myself it was because that was where I was needed but really I think I just didn’t want to look.”  She glanced at his drink and he nudged it over to her.  “I didn’t even look when I was in the cockpit,” she said, wrapping her hand around the glass and lifting it to her mouth.  “On Earth.  I looked away, and then we were flying away and there was nothing left to see.”  She took a drink.<br/><br/>Something <em>beeped</em>, and then EDI’s voice came from the nearest speaker.  “Specialist Traynor, this beverage exceeds your rations allowance for the month.”<br/><br/>“Waive it, EDI,” Kaidan said wearily.  “She can have mine.”<br/><br/>“You’re sure?” Traynor said, somewhere between guilty and grateful.<br/><br/>He shrugged.  “I’m holding out for…”  <em>Cider from the orchard.  A decent lager.  Any beer, actually.  Single-barrel scotch whiskey.</em>  “When the Benning guys break into their stores.”<br/><br/>She paused with the drink against her lips.  “They said they won’t do that until we see Earth again.”<br/><br/>“Well,” he said, “then I guess I’ll wait.”<br/><br/>She sipped at the drink, her eyes never leaving his face.  She’d been so nervous around him when he’d first boarded the ship.  He didn’t know if she was bold now because he’d given her a drink or because she’d grown up enough to realize a person’s past accomplishments only meant as much as what they did going forward.  Or maybe she’d just realized she was one of the heroes now, too.<br/><br/>“Did it look like that,” she said, still holding her drink close to her mouth, as if afraid of the answer, “on Earth?  Before we left?  That—bad?”<br/><br/>He closed his eyes and saw it again, the angry red glow fractioning the Crucible and his heart along with it.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Maybe worse.”  And he didn’t want to say it, but he was tired and she was already drinking.  “Fewer people aboard, at least.”<br/><br/>She swallowed hard and kept drinking until she’d drained the glass.  “Shit,” she gasped when she finished, her hand shaking as she set down the glass.  “I—”<br/><br/>“No worries,” he said, though his voice caught on the last word and he had to clear his throat.  “Just keep an eye on your ration allowance, all right?  We need you.”<br/><br/>She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and nodded, eyes widening a moment, and he stood and had to resist the strange urge to ruffle her hair.  <em>Old</em>, that’s what he was.  Tired and old.  And then she looked up at him with the young gaze of a sailor who’d seen too much, and she said, “Well, if anyone could survive it—”<br/><br/>“I know,” he said, softly, more for her than for himself, though the words echoed in a place inside him where a young soldier had once tried to convince himself of the same thing.  He’d tried to have a life again, then.  He wasn’t sure the option remained.  “Thanks, Traynor.”<br/><br/>Her half-smile was rueful and sweet, and as he turned away he hoped she couldn’t tell he was beating a retreat.<br/><br/>(If anyone could survive it, she could.  If.  <em>If</em>.  But she didn’t deal in possibilities; she just <em>did</em>.  So she must have, and she was okay.  Or at least going to be okay.  Or—<em>okay</em>.)<br/><br/>After Arcturus came…space.<br/><br/>Empty space, mostly.  There could have been a thousand ships passing them in the night and they’d never know; the destruction of Arcturus Station had left the QEC system hopelessly disrupted, the comm buoys were completely nonfunctional, as far as they could tell, and in any case the number of distress calls had lessened since they’d left occupied space.  Occasionally the sensors would pick up a derelict freighter, and if scans detected enough fuel aboard they’d divert course to scavenge it, but mostly they just…flew.  Flew, and tried to keep morale up.<br/><br/>They held dance parties in the observation lounges.  They’d have cooking competitions using the unlabeled cans and packages hiding at the bottom of the supply chamber—James usually blew past his competitors, but occasionally one of the ensigns would win in an upset and be given an extra alcohol ration as a reward.  They had movie nights.  They had more push-up contests than anyone could count.  Sometimes they’d shut off the ship’s artificial gravity and play biotiball in the shuttle bay, though Kaidan tried not to join in for fairness’s sake.  Occasionally, if they’d found some extra fuel, or if Adams said the FTL drive could use a rest, or if their pilot seemed <em>this close</em> to finally cracking, he’d tell Joker to put the <em>Normandy</em> through her paces and he’d tell everyone else to buckle in.<br/><br/>But the journey wore on, and signs of wear and tear appeared everywhere, from the increasingly stale taste of the water from the dispensers to the lengthening waiting list for a shift in the sleep pods.  James reported breaking up fights in the weight room, and Joker caught one or two people standing in front of the airlock for far longer than seemed healthy.  More than one couple flirted with the fraternization regs, and more than one break-up required individual counseling.  He directed most of them to Dr. Chakwas, because what was he going to do, lecture them?  <em>The regs are there for a reason</em>, said the major living in the commander’s quarters and sleeping in her bed.  <em>They’re there to save you a lot of pain and heartache</em>.<br/><br/>That would at least be true.<br/><br/>Months passed in relative silence, relative isolation, their only company the stars around them and the sound of their own voices.  Or just the sound of Tali’s enviro suit filtering air as they sat around the table in the conference room and stared at the ship’s inventories, especially the dextro nutritional supply, and tried not to voice their worries aloud.<br/><br/>“We’ll be fine,” Garrus said eventually.<br/><br/>“We’d be better if we could sign up for sleep pod shifts,” Tali said, drumming her fingers on the table.  “A little hibernation would go a long way.”<br/><br/>“The doc’s said she’s got antibiotics if you want to try it,” Kaidan offered, but the quarian shook her head. <br/><br/>“The Fleet has too many stories of what happens when disease breaks out on a small ship,” she said.  “A little hunger is better than everyone dying overnight.  And besides, it still wouldn’t help Garrus.”<br/><br/>“It’s like Cerberus went out of their way to make sure the fringe wouldn’t fit,” Garrus said, turning his head in profile so that his fringe was outlined against the stars.  “At least the SR-1 pods were designed for use by both species.”<br/><br/>“But not krogans,” Liara said.  “Wrex always slept on the deck.”<br/><br/>“In the <em>weirdest</em> places,” Kaidan said, dredging up memories he didn’t realized he’d left locked away.  “I remember Ashley tripping over him on the way to the showers once.  Joker said he could hear her scream on the bridge.”<br/><br/>“Oh,” Tali said, “is <em>that</em> what that was?”<br/><br/>But she was laughing, and Garrus was chuckling, and even Liara had a small smile on her usually grim face.  Kaidan smiled back, but his chest went tight all the same.  <em>A little hunger</em>.<br/><br/>“Kaidan,” Tali said, gentle and reassuring, “we’ll be okay.”<br/><br/>“If you say so,” he said with a sigh, rubbing his face.<br/><br/>“Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a turian ship to scavenge,” Garrus said.<br/><br/>“Great,” Kaidan said.  “I’ll just tell EDI to be on the lookout.”<br/><br/>“Actually,” said EDI over a nearby speaker, “while I have not seen any turian ships, I have come across a message of some historic value regarding human-turian relations, if you would like to hear it.”<br/><br/>“Sure,” Kaidan said.  <br/><br/>“Thank you,” EDI said.  “I have already reviewed the subject matter with Specialist Traynor and with Jeff, and both indicated that it may be of interest to the crew at large.  We have done our best to clean the signal, but some interference remains.  Specialist Traynor describes it as ‘charm.’”<br/><br/>She went silent, and then from the speaker issued a crackling announcement.  “People of Earth,” said a professional male voice, and Kaidan froze, because he knew what was coming next.  “This is Admiral Jon Grissom.  We have received word that an expeditionary force attempting to activate a mass relay has encountered starships belonging to an unknown entity.  The encounter was hostile.  The Systems Alliance is prepared to take whatever actions are necessary to defend our colonies and our people.”  For a moment, the crackling filled the silence, and then Grissom’s voice returned, shaken, off-script.  “We’re not alone out there, folks.”<br/><br/>After another moment the crackling faded.  Kaidan rested his elbows on the table and ran his hands through his hair.  “I remember when that happened,” he said.  “I was sitting at the table, eating an apple.  Had a glass of milk.  Mom dropped the jug and it spilled all over the floor.”  The day had been cloudy, the light coming through the open windows pale and white, just like his mother’s face.  His father had come home late that day, and he’d heard his parents talking long into the night.  But he hadn’t deployed, not for that war.  “How’d that come up, EDI?”<br/><br/>“The radio signal containing the broadcast has been traveling from Earth ever since its initial airing,” she said.  “We simply came within range of it, and I happened to capture enough of it to recognize its significance.”<br/><br/>Less than thirty light-years out.  But still months to go.  “Have there been other broadcasts?”<br/><br/>“There are a multitude of signals from Earth,” EDI said.  “However, given their age, I have not expended the effort to decipher them.  I have also picked up signals from various other races, but I have allowed them to pass for similar reasons.”<br/><br/>“But nothing recent,” Garrus said.<br/><br/>“No,” EDI said.  “I’m afraid not.”<br/><br/>They looked at each other.  Garrus scratched at his scar; Tali ran her hand over the table.  Liara glanced at her lap, and then Tali said, “It’s not like we were the only ships to go through the relay.”<br/><br/>“But we might be the only ones who got their FTL drive up and running,” Liara said.<br/><br/>“At barely one percent,” Garrus added.  “If <em>Shepard</em>’s ship can’t do any better than that…”<br/><br/>“I wish she was here,” Tali said suddenly.<br/><br/>They all looked at her and her helmet tilted down, as if she was watching her hand as it passed across the table’s polished top.  “You said it yourself,” she said.  “It’s her ship.  She should be here.”<br/><br/>“It’s Alchera all over again,” Liara said, and Kaidan slammed a hand on the table.<br/><br/>“It’s not Alchera,” he said, aware of Liara’s pitying gaze, Garrus’s steady one, Tali’s luminous eyes all looking at him.  Too many words caught in his throat—<em>we were there, the ship went down, she wasn’t alone</em>—but in the end she had been, and she hadn’t talked about it often but he’d lost count of the number of times he’d woken in the middle of the night to find her holding onto him, digging her fingers into his skin as if she had to reassure herself that he was there.  He’d promised to be there.  He’d promised she wouldn’t have to find out what it was like, if he wasn’t.<br/><br/><em>I need you to get the crew onto the evac shuttles</em>.<br/><br/><em>You gotta get out of here</em>.<br/><br/><em>No matter what happens…</em><br/><br/>“We do still have a ship,” Garrus said.  “And no one’s been declared dead.”<br/><br/>“That we’ve heard,” Liara said.<br/><br/>“<em>Liara</em>,” Tali said, and he was surprised to hear tears in her voice.<br/><br/>Something hardened in Liara’s face, and Tali’s hand clenched into a fist atop the table as they stared at each other.  “It’ll be months before we hear anything either way,” he said, attempting peace.<br/><br/>“It was months before they changed the MIA after Alchera—” Liara began.  <br/><br/>“I didn’t say she was <em>dead</em>,” Tali exclaimed.<br/><br/>“—but at least this time we’re together,” the asari finished.  “Her legacy lives in us, in this ship.  We won’t—fall apart, like last time.”<br/><br/>Easy for you to say, he wanted to say, but the finality in her voice—the way she sounded as though she had braced herself and was forcing herself to face the thought—left him too close to shattering to say anything aloud.  His fingers dug into his palms, trying to grab hold of someone who wasn’t there.<br/><br/>“No Reaper threat to cover up this time,” Garrus pointed out.<br/><br/>“But her legacy isn’t just the Reapers,” Liara said.  “It’s peace.  It’s the alliances she fostered.  It’s all of us—human, asari, turian, krogan, rachni, salarian, quarian, geth, volus, batarian—all working together.”<br/><br/>“To face a common enemy,” Garrus argued, while Tali sniffed and Kaidan’s throat closed up.<br/><br/>“To achieve a common goal,” Liara countered.  “We all worked together to build the Crucible.  It’s up to us to remind everyone of that, to remind everyone that she didn’t just fight against the Reapers, she fought to save <em>everyone</em>, to give <em>everyone </em>a chance.  That she couldn’t have done it if we hadn’t all worked together.  A war like this,” and she waved her hand at the expanse of nothing out the viewport, nothing but stars upon stars upon stars with inaudible words between them, as if perhaps if he only had the right antenna he could tune into the correct channel and hear—<br/><br/><em>I love you.  Always.</em><br/><br/>“It can all-too-easily turn into chaos, everyone fighting over the scraps of what remains.  We can’t let that happen,” Liara said, her fist landing in her other open palm.  “For Shepard.”<br/><br/>Garrus nodded; Tali went on staring at the table and sniffing; and Kaidan said, quiet, hoarse, his voice far away even to his own ears, “She said she’d be waiting for me.”<br/><br/>They looked at him again, and he stared at the table, wondering if this was how she’d felt in those final moments above Alchera, drifting and unable to breathe.  “Well,” Tali said finally, her voice thick but firm, “then she must be.  She always…kept her word.”<br/><br/>“Keeps her word,” Garrus said, though whether for him or for Tali or for himself, he wasn’t sure.<br/><br/>“I hope so,” Liara said softly, and unexpectedly took his hand and gave it a squeeze.<br/><br/>“I know so,” Tali said firmly, and something in his heart lightened, to know that at least one other person aboard the ship needed to be as deep in denial as himself.<br/><br/>“Right,” he said.  “But you make a good point, Liara.  It can’t hurt to start…”<br/><br/>“I’ve been creating projections,” she said.<br/><br/>“Of course you have,” Garrus muttered, fond and exasperated. <br/><br/>She ignored him.  “Compiling lists, considering the possibilities depending on who survived, which leaders, which navies.  Trying to determine what it will require to repair the relays.  The nearest resources to the Sol system.  The finer points of salarian diplomacy.”<br/><br/>“I don’t think Shepard ever cared about the finer points of any diplomacy,” Garrus said, and Kaidan surprised himself when he laughed.<br/><br/>“But you’re not Shepard,” Liara said plainly.<br/><br/>“You’re right,” Garrus said.  “For one, I’m far better-looking.”<br/><br/>Tali threw a datasheet at him, and Kaidan laughed again, and Liara continued earnestly telling them of her designs, and for the first time he had a sense of—of purpose, of something at the end of this journey other than the ruined remains of everything he loved.<br/><br/>(But they wouldn’t be defending her legacy alone, because she’d be there to help them.  Because she was waiting for him.  Because she was okay.)<br/><br/>Three months out, a portside stabilizer went haywire, and they dropped out of FTL to fix it.  “Probably just rattled by too many space pebbles,” Adams said as they gathered around his schematics down in Engineering.  “Normally by now we’d have docked and done routine maintenance, so it’s not surprising, given the circumstances.  But it’ll require EVA.”<br/><br/>Kaidan’s eyebrows rose.  “You got anybody trained in that?”<br/><br/>“It’s standard for some MVCs,” Adams said.  “Hell, I’m technically qualified.  But I wouldn’t turn down some help.  Since we’re going out there anyway, might as well canvass the whole ship, make sure nothing else is waiting to break.”<br/><br/>“Something’s always waiting to break,” Donnelly opined from his station.<br/><br/>“What Ken’s saying is he’s trained in EVA,” Daniels said, eliciting a groan from her companion.  “I’m sure he’d love to help.”<br/><br/>“I’ll go too,” Tali said.  “Kaidan?  You coming?”<br/><br/>He opened his mouth to demure and instead said, “Sure.  Why not?”<br/><br/>There was a comfort in suiting up, in clicking his helmet in place and hearing the sound of his own breath fill his ears before the speakers kicked in.  He felt…<em>right</em>, his body adjusting to the weight of the hardsuit like an old friend, and the toolset around his hips felt enough like his pistol that he didn’t miss it much.  They stood in the airlock and he found himself shaking out his arms, rolling his shoulders, jogging from one foot to the other, as if they were about to drop into a hot zone instead of take one step, and then another, and launch themselves into the vacuum of space.<br/><br/>The stars hung around him as they had for so many months, now, but without the thin layer of viewport, the slight glare of the ship’s interior lights reflecting off the glass, they felt…<em>present</em>.  Immediate, even though the nearest one was still light years away.  Within the ship, they presented a vista rather like the bars on a cell, forbidding and confining; here, they enveloped him, endlessly surrounding him, and for a moment they felt like a blanket wrapped around his face, smothering and claustrophobic, and the hardsuit VI beeped at him for taking too shallow breaths.<br/><br/>He took a deep one and the beeping subsided.  He hadn’t done EVA work in…months.  Only to be expected, the vertigo.  The fear.  And they had only lasted a second; the others hadn’t even started for their stations, though perhaps that was because they were all trapped in the same limbo, feeling for a moment as though the stars would simply swallow them whole.<br/><br/>“And break,” Adams said, and they scattered to the four corners of the ship, Adams and Donnelly to work on the stabilizer, Tali and Kaidan to inspect the rest of the ship for any damage or impending crises.<br/><br/>He engaged his boots and landed on the side of the ship, walking his way to the bridge.  He saw the occasional pockmark, but nothing serious, and then he disengaged the boots so that he could float over the bridge viewports and wave at Joker.  The pilot was staring at a readout, so he risked tapping on the glass to get his attention.<br/><br/>Joker nearly fell out of his chair, arms and legs akimbo and scrambling for balance, and for a moment Kaidan worried he’d broken something, and the terror on Joker’s face almost made him regret disturbing him.  But he managed to settle back into his chair—EDI said something from the copilot’s seat—and he waited for some signal to come over his speakers; instead, Joker lifted both hands and deliberately shot him the bird.<br/><br/>He laughed and waved again, earning a look of disgust, and then Joker’s expression went thoughtful and he held up a non-insulting finger.  Kaidan gave him a thumbs-up and Joker nodded, then went rummaging for something under his chair.  A moment later he emerged with something very tattered, which he opened and held up to the window.  With a deep sense of foreboding, Kaidan floated towards it and was rewarded with an eyeful of a turian and a hanar doing what no turian or hanar should ever do.<br/><br/>He broke and flipped on his comm.  “You still <em>have</em> that?”<br/><br/>“Dude, it’s the only copy of <em>Fornax</em> still on the ship,” Joker said.  “Do you know how much money I make renting it out?”<br/><br/>He refrained from pointing out that the galactic banking institutions were probably worthless at this point and said, “Please tell me you sanitize it between loans.”<br/><br/>“That’s a secret,” Joker said, probably just to make him wince, which he did.  “I’ll cut you a deal if you want a turn.”<br/><br/>“Thanks,” he said, “but I’ll pass.”<br/><br/>Through the viewport, Joker shrugged.  “Your loss,” he said, returning the magazine to its hiding place.  “How’s my baby?”<br/><br/>Kaidan pushed off from the viewport, up and away, until he hung a few meters away from the nose of the ship.  For a moment he found himself expecting the SR-1 and was surprised by the <em>bulk</em> of the SR-2; for a moment he was standing before a window, looking upon the SR-1 in dock, bag over his shoulder, waiting to board, absolutely thrilled at the prospect of serving aboard a state-of-the-art frigate commanded by actual heroes.  For a moment, he was younger, bouncing on his toes, barely able to keep his biotics from manifesting in excited bursts; and for a moment, he felt older than the stars surrounding him, watching him with their oppressive gaze.<br/><br/>She was still beautiful, was the thing, the <em>Normandy</em> was.  And looking at her still gave him the sense of—anticipation, the knowledge that big things were in store for her, and that he would be a part of them.  But so much of that had been the commander’s doing, and without her—<br/><br/>“Looks great from here,” he said, distracting himself with the flashes of light where Adams and Donnelly were at work.  “How does EDI feel when you call her a baby?”<br/><br/>“It depends,” EDI said, and through the viewport he watched Joker’s expression travel through the realms of horror and embarrassment to settle on a death glare.  “In this context, while I do not need to be coddled, I appreciate the sentiment.”<br/><br/>“Don’t you have work to be doing?” Joker said.  “Get to it so we can get going.”<br/><br/>“Aye-aye, sir,” Kaidan said, throwing him a salute and earning another obscene gesture.  <br/><br/>He smiled a little, engaged the thrusters in the toolbelt, and sailed back to the ship’s hull, reactivating his boots as he landed.  There was no <em>clang</em>, of course, just the mild sensation of a thud, and a similar silence stalked his steps as he continued his inspection.  A little worse for the wear in places, but still carrying on, still bearing the burden carried within.  A ding here, a bit of lodged debris there, a few cracks that needed a little more attention.  He knelt, filled one with the strongest solder they’d had aboard, and ignited his torch; when he was finished, he passed his hand over the repair, feeling its smoothness.  And then he went on, running his hand along the hull of the ship, their ticket home, their safe haven, their only defense against the silent immensity of the galaxy around them.  A bastion of life and possibility against the vacuum and void.<br/><br/>His hand paused, and he hesitated, then patted the ship’s hull once, twice.  “We’ll get you home,” he said.  “Thanks for keeping us safe.”<br/><br/>In a half-second he realized the ship might actually respond, but if EDI was listening she said nothing.  He crouched for a moment more, staring at his repair work and seeing—nothing and everything—and then over the comm he heard Tali’s voice.  <br/><br/>“Got an aft-side fin that needs securing,” she said.  “Can I get a hand?”<br/><br/>He touched the side of his helmet.  “On my way,” he said, and he stood and dusted off his hands and looked down at the hull for the last time.  “Thanks,” he said again, and then he made his way aft to make sure she was safe, to make sure he’d hold up his end of the bargain.<br/><br/>(The <em>Normandy</em> wasn’t the <em>Normandy</em> without her, and she was still flying; so she must be okay.)<br/><br/>One light-year away.<br/><br/>“You can see the Sun from here,” Joker said, his voice coming over the speakers to the group of them standing at the galaxy map, staring at the little indicator of the <em>Normandy</em><em>’s</em> current position.  “I’m serious.  It’s so bright.”<br/><br/>“A star of Sol’s stature is hardly the most significant source of lumens we’ve encountered in this journey,” Liara said.  “Arcturus is orders of magnitude—”<br/><br/>“But it’s <em>our</em> Sun,” Traynor said.<br/><br/>“We gettin’ competitive about sun sizes now?” Vega asked.  “’Cause I’m ready to throw down if we need to.”<br/><br/>“No one’s throwing down,” Kaidan said firmly, though he worried that the same bubbly anticipation he heard in everyone else’s voices trickled into his as well.  Truth be told, he was as excited as any of them, a nervy excitement that rebounded wildly between anxiety and exhilaration.  The whole crew felt it.  Even the aliens, who weren’t returning to their home planet, had been on edge.  This was it.  In a week they’d be back; in a week the future arrived, and <em>after</em> began.<br/><br/>In a week they’d know—<br/><br/>“We should have planned a countdown,” Traynor said, fingers flying over her console.  “Some sort of celebration.  How long will it be before Earth is in visual range?  Can we get the Benning guys to tap a keg when that happens?  Is someone keeping a lookout?”<br/><br/>“Not a bad idea,” Vega said, crossing his arms over his enormous chest.  “Something else for people to keep their minds on.  Something to let them spend all that energy before they get careless.”<br/><br/>Kaidan looked at him for a moment, took in his thoughtful expression, his steady stance.  “That’s downright insightful, Vega,” he said.  “You’ll make a good commander.”<br/><br/>“Thanks,” Vega answered, startled and looking more like the young man who’d followed <em>his</em> commander with helplessly hopeful eyes.  Kaidan had recognized that look, as well, and it still made him smile.<br/><br/>“Salsa night?” Steve said.<br/><br/>James shook his head. “I was thinking more—”<br/><br/>“We should also make preparations for arrival,” Liara interrupted, the barest edge of impatience in her voice.  “Revisit the priority list, strategize resupply needs—”<br/><br/>“I don’t care what we do so long as there’s dextro food involved,” Tali said.  “Another flavor of protein shake.  Anything.”<br/><br/>“No more shakes,” Garrus said, shaking his head.  “Real meat.  Please.  Even if it’s just jerky.”<br/><br/>“I could go for some bacon,” Kaidan said, his mouth suddenly watering even as Vega groaned.<br/><br/>“<em>Bacon</em>,” he said, clutching his stomach.  “Oh man, and fresh eggs again.”<br/><br/>“I just want a salad,” Traynor said.  “A nice, composed—”<br/><br/>She stopped, her eyes wide, and they all looked to her, their breaths held.  “EDI,” she said, “are you seeing this?”<br/><br/>“I am,” EDI said, “but—”<br/><br/>“What is it?” Liara asked, shoving past Kaidan to look over Traynor’s shoulder.  “A signal?”<br/><br/>Traynor shook her head even as her fingers started flying again.  “Multitudes.  Thousands.  Here, I’ll—”<br/><br/>She passed her fingers over a few haptic keys, and a voice came from the speakers.  “All fleets!  The Crucible is armed!”<br/><br/>“Oh,” Traynor said, her hands falling away, but Hackett’s voice continued.<br/><br/>“Disengage and head to the rendezvous point.  I repeat.  Disengage and get the hell out of here.”<br/><br/>That part he remembered.  The voices that followed were a jumble, dozens upon dozens of ships and voices crying out orders and damage reports, the occasional transmission leaping out above the rest—<br/><br/><em>This is the SSV Logan.  Third Fleet, disengage.  Repeat, disengage.<br/><br/>SSV Trafalgar here.  Our drive core’s shot, Admiral.  We won’t be at the rendezvous.<br/><br/>SSV Davis!  All fighters, return to hangar, now!<br/><br/>Understood, Trafalgar.  Godspeed.<br/><br/></em>“They broadcast on all frequencies,” Traynor whispered as a dozen fighters responded to their carrier’s call, some affirmative, some cut off in mid-scream.  “I didn’t think—”<br/><br/><em>The Crucible!  <br/><br/>All fleets, to the rendezvous!<br/><br/>Does anyone know who’s aboard?<br/><br/>All ships, this is Rear Admiral Shepard aboard the SSV Tai Shan.  If you can’t make the rendezvous, regroup at these coordinates.  Repeat, regroup at these coordinates.<br/><br/>It’s gonna blow!<br/><br/>Fighters, get away from the Crucible.  Damn it, I said get </em>out<em> of there—<br/><br/>SSV Hong Kong, this is no time for a repeat.  Disengage, repeat, disengage—<br/><br/>This is Captain Hara of the Hong Kong.  Engines are shot.  We’re drifting.  It’s—lighting up—<br/><br/>This is Admiral Shepard.  Get the hell away—<br/><br/>Oh God, it’s going to blow!</em><br/><br/>“Shut it off, EDI,” Liara said sharply.  “Shut it <em>off</em>—”<br/><br/><em>That light—</em><br/><br/>The voices were already screaming.<br/><br/>He didn’t even notice EDI obey because in his mind they kept screaming, <em>kept screaming</em>, and he didn’t see Traynor bury her face in her hands or Tali grip Vega’s arm to keep from falling over because he was moving, stumbling in his attempt to run <em>away</em>, grasping the bulkhead as he passed through the door to the War Room, past Campbell and Westmoreland’s aghast expressions as they poked their heads in to see what was going on.  And he kept moving, past the conference room, past the defunct model of the Crucible floating in a whole lot of nothing, until he reached the silence of the QEC room and the door slid shut behind him.<br/><br/>He kept moving until he hit the comm panel and had to brace himself against it, his head bowed, his shoulders heaving, and then he gave up and slid to the floor and covered his face with his hands.  He should have been there.  He should have been there and he hadn’t and to hell with the screams because the only voice he wanted to hear had been aboard the bright burning beacon that had torn the galaxy asunder and in a week they’d be back and he’d see it and he’d <em>know</em>, and he didn’t—he <em>couldn’t</em>—<br/><br/>he saw her, the outline of her, shadowed against the light, saw her standing and staring into the flames, alone, <em>alone</em>, and he dug his fingers into his face, pressing his sweaty palms against his tear-stained cheeks, his heart pounding <em>a-lone, a-lone</em>, and she’d been alone and now he was alone and this wasn’t how—and she’d have been brave, so brave, wouldn’t want him to be curled in this ball of misery, but then again she’d promised to be waiting and the worst part was he still believed her, still thought that in a week or a month or a year he’d see her again, hold her again, tell her again and again and again and instead in a week it would be Alchera all over again and this time he—<br/><br/><em>We have a legacy to uphold</em>, Liara whispered, and he slammed a fist on the ground in frustration, jammed the heels of his hands against his eyes as if that might stem the tide.<br/><br/>Damn her legacy.  He wanted<em> her</em>.<br/><br/>“Shepard,” he whispered, his voice cracking, and how long had it been since he’d let himself say her name? and saying it felt like a surrender to the inevitable, and the fight left his body, “I can’t do this again.”<br/><br/>A light flashed.  He thought he’d pressed too hard against his eyes, but then a voice said, “<em>Normandy</em>?”<br/><br/>He’d finally snapped.<br/><br/>“This is Major Coats, Systems Alliance, Earth.  Do you read me?  <em>Normandy</em>?”<br/><br/>“Normandy,” he breathed, and then he was on his feet without knowing how he got there, spinning around to face the hologram of a very surprised Major Coats.  “This is the <em>SSV Normandy</em>, Major Alenko, acting captain.”<br/><br/>“Alenko?” Coats said, and for a moment they stared at each other in utter disbelief.  The QECs weren’t responding, EDI had said, and yet—“Kaidan Alenko?”<br/><br/>“Yes.  Sir,” he added, though it wasn’t technically required.  “You—”<br/><br/>“If I haven’t heard your name once I’ve heard it a hundred times,” Coats said, still staring at him.  “It’s the only thing we could get her to say for the first month.  <em>Kaidan Alenko</em>.”<br/><br/>The deck fell away, then the walls, the hull, until all that remained was Coats before him as he hung, suspended, in a sea of stars, the entire galaxy turning on its head around him and he helpless before it.  His mouth moved once, twice, but of course sound didn’t travel in the vacuum of space.<br/><br/>“That’s classified,” Coats said suddenly, and then he wrinkled his nose and said, “but to hell with it, it’s her ship and it’s your name.  She’s only been conscious a couple of months, she’s in bad shape, but—”<br/><br/>“She,” he repeated, though he wasn’t sure he wasn’t just hallucinating, that any moment now he might wake up in the med bay with Dr. Chakwas standing over him with professional softness in her eyes.  <br/><br/>“Shepard,” Coats said, as though this were obvious, as though moments before he hadn’t given her up for dead and gone <em>again</em>.  “What’s your position?  When you didn’t rendezvous with the Fleet we thought—”<br/><br/>“A week out,” he said, his mouth dry, and then abruptly he was standing on the deck again and the <em>Normandy</em> closed in around him, present and insistently real and begging to be released.  “I—EDI,” he said, and then he was shouting her name, “EDI, what’s our coordinates, where are we—<em>EDI</em>, are you hearing this?”<br/><br/>“Yes, Major,” she said, her voice as shaky as he’d ever heard it.  “Transmitting coordinates now.  It is good to see you, Major Coats.”<br/><br/>Coats was looking at his omni-tool, his brow furrowed.  “Coordinates…received.  The hell was that?”<br/><br/>“EDI,” Kaidan said, “she’s alive, Shepard, she’s—you’re <em>sure</em>.”<br/><br/>Coats looked up at him.  “It wasn’t pretty,” he said.  “Still isn’t.  But it’s her.  And she remembers you, if nothing else—she remembers more than just you—look,” he said, “do you want us to tell her you’re coming?”<br/><br/>He got stuck somewhere between a nod and a shake, some part of him worried that he might come completely undone before they arrived, might not make it, as if the enormity of his loss and his gain were too much to be contained in one body.  “Whatever you think best,” he said finally, though the words felt like a blow.  “If you think it’d be too much—”<br/><br/>“I’ll give it a day or two,” Coats said, studying Kaidan with something between curiosity, amusement, and pity.  “Wait until we pick you up on close-range scanners.  We’ll send you an escort, if you like.  Any preferences?”<br/><br/>“No,” he said, breathless, and then he had a half-second to think and said, “We’ve got a turian and a quarian aboard, sir, and they’d appreciate a real meal if you’ve got one.”<br/><br/>“Done,” Coats said.  “Anything you need when you get here?”<br/><br/>He didn’t have to think.  “Bacon,” he said, “and beer, and a steak, please tell me the Reapers didn’t kill all the cows—”<br/><br/>Coats laughed, a laugh Kaidan recognized, a man overworked and exhausted and constantly facing the worst of news given the gift of something joyful.  “The Reapers didn’t kill all the cows, Alenko,” he said.  “We’ll have steak.  And bacon.”<br/><br/>“Roger that,” he said, throwing a salute that Coats returned.  “I gotta tell the crew.”<br/><br/>“Understood,” Coats said.  “Damn, but it’s good to hear from you, <em>Normandy</em>.”<br/><br/>“Same to you,” Kaidan said.  “Over and out.”<br/><br/>Coats nodded and ended the transmission and for a moment he stood staring at the space where the hologram had been, perfectly still; and then he was pounding at the door when it failed to open fast enough, running, blowing past Campbell and Westmoreland’s tear-streaked faces as he shouted <em>She’s alive, she’s alive and they know we’re coming</em> into his crewmates’ bewildered faces, as he grabbed Traynor and swung her around and EDI came over the speaker to confirm his words, as the CIC broke into an incomprehensible whirl of joyful shouts and cries and jubilation, as at the center of it all his heart pounded <em>a-live, a-live</em>.<br/><br/>(She was okay, and there was going to be bacon.)<br/><br/></p><hr/><p><br/><em>epilogue <br/></em><br/><br/>“You’re just eating that to spite me,” Shepard groaned from her hospital bed as Kaidan pulled up the tray with his steak dinner on it.<br/><br/>“Shhhhhh,” he said, inhaling and trying not to drool on the actual plate.  “Listen.”<br/><br/>“To what?”<br/><br/>“The sizzle,” he said reverently, ogling the luscious mound of butter melting atop the most beautiful hunk of partially cooked meat he’d ever seen.<br/><br/>“Just eat it,” she said impatiently.  “I’m dying here.  Sorry,” she said, when he glanced at her, “sorry, I know—”<br/><br/>He turned away from the steak in order to plant a kiss on the one patch of healed skin on her forehead.  The rest of her face was a mess of grafts and partial regrowth, the red of her cybernetics peeking through at every crack, her eyes glinting if she looked at him the wrong way.  He didn’t care.  His lips lingered against her skin and he felt her lean into it and the blood rushed every which way in his veins and this, he thought, was bliss.<br/><br/>This, and the steak he was about to eat.  “Good news,” he said, picking up knife and fork, taking one last admiring at the perfection upon his plate before he ruined it in the name of consumption.<br/><br/>“You’re going to put me out of my misery?”<br/><br/>“Doc said you can have some,” he said, cutting the tiniest sliver.  She opened her mouth to make some surprise retort and he popped the meat in instead, grinning as she pressed her lips together and scowled at him before she started to chew and her eyes rolled back in her head.<br/><br/>“Mm,” she said, and he’d heard her make <em>that</em> noise before but somehow the fact that she was making it over steak made it even sexier and he had to take a steadying breath and remind himself of the doctors’ timelines before he got carried away.  “Oh, Kaidan.”<br/><br/>“I know,” he said, cutting himself a larger piece and placing it reverently in his mouth.  “Mmph.  Oh.  <em>Shepard</em>.”<br/><br/>“Stop it,” she said, teasing but also a little breathless, and he fed her another slice before either of them attempted something that would set off one of the many medical alarms tethered to her body.  “Oh.  That’s <em>good</em>.  I can’t remember the last time I had real food.”<br/><br/>“You should have seen Tali when the <em>Tonbay</em> showed up,” he said.  “She cried and offered to link suits with the poor private who brought her lunch.”<br/><br/>“Good for her,” Shepard said.  “Did he accept?”<br/><br/>“He ran.”<br/><br/>She lifted her right shoulder, just a little bit, the most she could manage for a shrug these days.  But every day it was a little higher, and one day she’d be free of the bed.  She was more than impatient, and he couldn’t help but laugh, though she glared at him when he did.  <br/><br/>They said it would take a year.  And what was a year, if he could be beside her for every moment of it?<br/><br/>“His loss,” she said.  “Is that bacon?”<br/><br/>“Is that bacon,” he scoffed, picking a piece and holding it up for her inspection.  “As if—hey!”<br/><br/>She’d leaned forward and taken a bite of it, right out of the air, and though she winced she couldn’t hide her triumph.  “Still got it,” she said.<br/><br/>“Commander Shepard, bacon thief,” he said, and she laughed.  “Doc said you can’t have my beer, though, sorry.”<br/><br/>She sniffed and her lungs caught, and he put a hand on the mostly-healed skin of her bicep as she coughed.  “One day,” she said.  “Soon.”<br/><br/>“Take your time,” he said, and she coughed again, though he suspected she wanted to snort.<br/><br/>“Easy for you to say,” she said, and then she sighed and said, “I’m so glad you’re here.”<br/><br/>“You told me to show up,” he said, and then she looked at him with a brightness in her eyes that had nothing to do with her cybernetics and everything to do with the terrified joy that came from the knowledge that he was <em>here</em>, relief mingling with the shedding of so many months and <em>years</em> of fear, and he wanted to gather her into his arms and crush her against his chest and whisper reassurances against her lips until they ran out of words, until they didn’t need them anymore.<br/><br/>The days were coming.  He settled for another kiss to her forehead.  “I love you,” she said, as he gently touched his forehead to hers.<br/><br/>“I love you too,” he said, and for a moment they sat there, resting against each other in the only way they could, <em>resting</em>, and it was more than he could have ever hoped for.<br/><br/>And then she said, “Now give me some steak,” and he laughed and cut her another slice and put it to her peeling lips and then helped himself to some bacon.<br/><br/>His father had been right, and he felt a pang knowing he wouldn’t be able to tell him.  The grief, he knew, would come and go; and so would hers, but they were beside each other now to help bear it.  He was here.  She was here.  They were alive.  <br/><br/>“I love you,” he said again, because he could, because she smiled at him when he said it.  They were together.  And there was bacon, and all the time left in the world.</p>
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